How do I lock the item if someone put it into shopping cart and release it if no buy?

searain

For a site to sell products which is unique each item.

I want to lock the item if one customer add it to the cart, so nobody else can add it to the cart, if the shopper buy it finally, this item will be removed from the available list, BUT if the customer doesn't buy it, and close the browser, I will release the lock off item, so other customers can begin to add it to the cart.

Lock the item is easy, in the add cart activity, turn the lock flag on. When it is sold, I will set up the item to be archived and removed from the current available list.

If the cutomer removed it from the cart, it is easy too, I will turn the lock flag off.

But How can I release the locked off item if the customers doesn't buy it and quit (close the browser) directly without remove it from the cart before he quit?

How can I know if a customers browser is still open, use session somehow to do that job?

leatherback

Have a table where you store the sessions' ID and the timestamp of the last action on your website by that ID. Everytime a page is loaded, you update the timestamp. Use this to check whether a person is still logged in.

palanisamy

One thing you can do is set a flag when the user add the cart the shop. and then reset the flag to some value. When other users click on the add option u can prvent it.

searain

leatherback wrote:
Have a table where you store the sessions' ID and the timestamp of the last action on your website by that ID. Everytime a page is loaded, you update the timestamp. Use this to check whether a person is still logged in.

Do you mean that I can assign the customer session id to the item when that customer add this item to the cart?

And every page (every activity from this customer or other customers), I can check to see if this session id is still alive. If it is not, I will release the item from lock to that session id. So other people can add it to the cart?

And I can make all the session id who add the items to the cart a session id table, and every activity of the web site from every one, will have a check on this session id table, and if any session is terminted, the items lock to those session ids will be released?

That is the standard approach of the php to handle this issue?

I saw some sites use the time, lock it for 15 minutes etc. And then release it. But they still have to use the above approach to test if within these 15 minutes, the customer who locked the item already quit. Right?

Thanks!